Ukraine knew of aid freeze early, report says
Timing, weeks earlier than U.S. said, undermines Trump defense
KYIV, UKRAINE >> To Democrats who say that President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze a $391 million military aid package to Ukraine was intended to bully Ukraine’s leader into carrying out investigations for Trump’s political benefit, the president and his allies have had a simple response: There could not have been any quid pro quo because the Ukrainians did not know the assistance had been blocked.
Following testimony by William B. Taylor Jr., the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, to House impeachment investigators Tuesday that the freezing of the aid was directly linked to Trump’s demand for the investigations, the president took to Twitter on Wednesday morning to approvingly quote a Republican member of Congress saying neither Taylor nor any other witness had “provided testimony that the Ukrainians were aware that military aid was being withheld.”
But in fact, word of the aid freeze had gotten to high-level Ukrainian officials by the first week in August, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times.
The problem was not a bureaucratic glitch, the Ukrainians were told then. To address it, they were advised, they should reach out to Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, according to the interviews and records.
The timing of the communications about the issue, which have not previously been reported, shows that Ukraine was aware the White House was holding up the funds weeks earlier than U.S. and Ukrainian officials had acknowl
edged. And it means that the Ukrainian government was aware of the freeze during most of the period in August when Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and two American diplomats were pressing President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to make a public commitment to the investigations being sought by Trump.
The communications did not explicitly link the assistance freeze to the push by Trump and Giuliani for the investigations. But in the communications, officials from the United States and Ukraine discuss the need to bring in the same senior aide to Zelensky who had been dealing with Giuliani about Trump’s demands for the investigations, signaling a possible link between the matters.
In another development, one of two indicted Giuliani associates tied the case to the president himself, saying that some of the evidence gathered in the campaign finance investigation could be subject to executive privilege.
The unusual argument was raised by a defense lawyer in federal court in Manhattan as the two associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, pleaded not guilty to federal charges that they had made illegal campaign contributions to political candidates in the United States in exchange for potential influence.
Parnas and Fruman have become unexpected figures in the events at the heart of the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, having played a role in helping Giuliani’s efforts on behalf of Trump to dig up information in Ukraine that could damage former Vice President Joe Biden, a prospective Democratic challenger.
Giuliani has denied wrongdoing but has acknowledged that he and the two men worked with officials in Ukraine to collect damaging information about the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and other targets of Trump and his allies, including Biden and his younger son, Hunter Biden.
Edward MacMahon, a lawyer for Parnas, told the judge that the potential for the White House to invoke executive privilege stemmed from the fact that Parnas had used Giuliani as his own lawyer at the same time Giuliani was working as Trump’s lawyer.
Word of the aid freeze got to the Ukrainians at a moment when Zelensky, who had taken office a little more than two months earlier after a campaign in which he promised to root out corruption and stand up to Russia, was off balance and uncertain how to stabilize his country’s relationship with the United States.
Days earlier, he had listened to Trump implore him on a half-hour call to pursue investigations touching on Joe Biden and a debunked conspiracy theory about Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee. Zelensky’s efforts to secure a visit to the White House — a symbolic affirmation of support he considered vital at a time when Russia continued to menace Ukraine’s eastern border — seemed to be stalled. U.S. policy toward Ukraine was being guided not by career professionals but by Giuliani.
Taylor testified to the impeachment investigators that he was told it was only on the sidelines of a Sept. 1 meeting in Warsaw between Zelensky and Vice President Mike Pence that the Ukrainians were directly informed by Gordon D. Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, that the aid would be dependent on Zelensky giving Trump something he wanted: an investigation into Burisma, the company that had employed Hunter Biden.
American and Ukrainian officials have asserted that Ukraine learned that the aid had been held up only around the time it became public through a news story at the end of August.
The aid freeze is getting additional scrutiny from the impeachment investigators Wednesday as they question Laura K. Cooper, a deputy assistant defense secretary for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia. This month, Democrats subpoenaed both the Defense Department and the White House Office of Management and Budget.
As Taylor’s testimony suggests, the Ukrainians did not confront the Trump administration about the freeze until they were told in September that it was linked to the demand for the investigations. The
Ukrainians appear to have initially been hopeful that the problem could be resolved and were reluctant to risk a public clash between the two nations.
The disclosure that the Ukrainians knew of the freeze by early August corroborates, and provides additional details about, a claim made by a CIA officer in his whistleblower complaint that sparked the impeachment inquiry by House Democrats.
“As of early August, I heard from U.S. officials that some Ukrainian officials were aware that U.S. aid might be in jeopardy, but I do not know how or when they learned of it,” the anonymous whistleblower wrote. The complainant said that he learned that the instruction to freeze the assistance “had come directly from the president,” and said it “might have a connection with the overall effort to pressure Ukrainian leadership.”